There is one project that has been on my mind for quite some time, and it was to do something about our dark, old, rather worn out dinning table. 

I started thinking about it when I painted our coffee table 3 years ago using chalk paint. For a while, the plan was to pain the dinning table in the same colors to match said coffee table, but then, we replaced the sofa and I got rid of the aforementioned coffee table, so I decided to go with the idea of having a white dinning table, which is one of the things I have on my bucket list. 

If you remember well, I bought chair covers earlier this year to cover our rather cringeworthy super worn out dinning chairs, because once again, there was a possibility of me painting the table before I got around to the idea of buying new dinning chairs. 

This dinning table and chair set was first bought in 2010 when we moved to Navi Mumbai, it has seen then been through 4 moves and have seen years of toddler abuse, followed by art project and art class abuse, to say that it has had a well lived life is an under statement. If you are new to this blog, and never saw what it looked like before, here is a fairly recent picture of it before all the makeovers happened : 

This area of my flat is a tricky one as it recieve no direct light from any windows, it's sitting in a window-less nook between all the bedrooms and the dark wood made the area look even darker than it is. At night it's also the one spot we can't have proper soft lighting, it's either we get blinded by one of those bloody tube lights I hate because I can hear the humming and see the light flicker they create or eat in semi darkness (it's another thing we are planning for later).

As said, the table got scratched over the year, the veneer bulged in places, and there are a lot of paint splatters for art projects I did before I decided getting plastic sheets was a good idea. Then there are all the art classes I thought would be non messy that we did without a protective sheet and got me to learn a valuable lesson : kids don't do non-messy in art class, they will find a way to color the table with colored pencils if they have to. 

I was waiting the end of the monsoon to get started on this project because the humidity during the rainy season then to affect wooden furnitures and it's never a good idea to use paint in those conditions. 

Ideally I would have prefered the kitchen renovation we are supposed to get to be done with, but nothing has been happening for over a month (a story for another time) so I decided to at least get that done before Diwali.

I used the same brand of paint I used when I painted my coffee table, plus a few tools which I am all going to list below as Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you click on any of these and make a purchase, I get paid a commission at no extra cost to you. So here goes! For this project here is what I used : 

- 2 pots of "Little Birdie" Chalk paint in Snow white, the pots are 450ml each and 1 pot let me do two full coats on my 6 seater dinning table, top and legs. 

- Since I was working with a HUGE surface, I bought a 9 inch paint roller and paint tray. I also had smaller foam rollers at home and I used the biggest one in that set for the legs and sides. 

- For tiny nooks and crannies and applying the varnish, I used flat brushes in several sizes. 

- To seal my paint, I used a matte varnish from "Little Birdie", I used the exact same one on my coffee table 3 years ago, it really will protect your table a long time. 

The first thing you need to do is wash the surface properly before painting, you want it to be as free of dust and grease as possible. To do it, I really just use the kitchen cleaner spray and a damp cloth, then let everything dry before painting. 

Since I have plastic sheets around for the art classes I give, I used these underneath the table so that no paint would hit the floor while I painted the legs of the table. 

I poured some of the paint into the paint tray and used my 9 inches roller to paint the table top and the smaller roller and brush to do the legs and sides of the table. 

Chalk paint can be applied as is on wooden furnitures without using a primer, the first coat always act as  a priming coat. So if you plan on painting your table a certain color, buy a small pot of white chalk paint to do the primer coat. 

In this case the table was going to be white, so I just painted that priming coat all over quickly. Chalk paint dries quickly if you apply it in thin coats, so by the time I was done with the last leg, the table top I painted first was dry and ready for the next coat. 

I painted 3 coats all over, and then applied one last quick coat of white on the table top since it was going to be the most used part of the table. 1 pot of 450ml was enough to do the priming coat and the second coat all over my 6 seater table which has curvy legs. At this point the coverage was quite good on the top, and almost good on the legs (them being curvy made painting them a bit challenging). 

The 3rd coat of paint evened out all the patchy bit left on the legs and gave the table top a uniform smooth finish. By then, I put my 9 inches roller away, and decided to use the leftover paint in my tray to do one more quick, thin coat on the top. I could have done without it, but since I had that paint leftover, why not? 

This brand of varnish recommend 2-3 coats of varnish for heavily used furnitures like a dinning table, otherwise 1 coat is enough. 

As I said, I used that brand when I varnished my coffee table in 2018 and 3 years later, it has done a great job at protecting the table from stains. 

Chalk paint will distress over time giving your furniture a shabby chic vibe, which is exactly what happened to the coffee table. So if you plan on wanting your table to keep on looking pristine without chips and scratches over time, you'll need to apply a new coat of paint every now and then. It's what I might do with the dinning table to be honest. 

The distressed coffee table was great, and I didn't mind it too much, but I have a feeling I might need to make a few food stains and scratches disappear on the dinning table, so I stored the leftover paint, ready to be used again as needed.

If you plan on doing touch ups on your furniture, make sure you keep a bit of paint handy, or write down the brand and color you used so you can reorder some for a future paint job.

My first debate was whether I wanted to keep going with a more compact layout that would fit in a 160 pages Archer & Olive or go for something that required more page and therefore a Leuchtturm Journal.

I even tested watercolors on the last page of my Life Journal (a Leuchtturm) to see if I could live with how the pages would look (I couldn't). Then I went to check my favourite Indian small business : Bigger Dreams to see what BuJo they had in the A&O range and started debating going for a 192 pages instead of a 160 pages one. 

This lead me to reconsider my idea of going for just boring white paper, and my dream if wanting to try the Blackout Book resurfaced. But Bigger Dreams has been out of stock of these for a while now, and I almost settled for the "Neapolitan" Journal which has a mix of white, black and craft paper. The problem is that it was available only in B5 format and I need a A5 journal! So I almost settled for a white BuJo again (but really didn't want to). 

One last Googling around lead me to know about another Indian BuJo online store : Paper Planning and more which also sells Archer & Olive in India and has the Blackout Book in stock! 

The also have the A&O Acrylograph pens, but I haven't made that jump yet. 

The instant the book arrived I started setting it up, enjoying the challenge writing on black pages bring. The paper quality is as good as you'd expect from Archer & Olive (they are the best) and it got me to look through all my existing art supplies and pens to see which one I would use.

I had 2 white Gelly rolls at home already (affiliate link) and have quite a few cheap gel pens from a Chinese brand left (used them a lot with my art students and in my journals). I also have been writing with my gold Uniball Signo pens for years and they work well in the Blackout book too. 

I did stop by my favourite neighbourhood art supply shop to buy a few more Gelly roll pens in their "moonlight" series (the ones with an opaque pigment base) and a few Posca pens to complete the collection of those I have already. 

I also have not one but two sets of metallic watercolors, one with various shades of gold and one with different shades altogether from Brustro. 

I might get more specific supplies as I go, but for now the plan is to use my white pens to write just the way I used my black pen to do so on white paper and use a combination of colored pens, paint and washi tape to embellish the pages as I go. 

The one tip I recommend if you never ever used black paper is to have a sheet of black paper to test all your pens. It doesn't have to be inside your Archer & Olive journal though. I used some bit of black origami paper I had stuffed away in a drawer. That way you can see how each of your paints and inks will behave on dark paper. 

Some of my cheap Chinese metallic pen actually have a translucent ink base with silver bits in them, so those don't do well on black at all. My Brustro metallic watercolor set is having some limitation with some of the colors that end up looking more silver than anything too. The Gold tones watercolor set on the other end performs extremely well on dark paper. 

Archer & Olive is known for it's thick paper, and the Blackout has the same 160 GSM paper their white journals has. But frankly, less GSM would not have been a problem either, black paper will mean no ghosting no patter the thickness, so if you can't afford an Archer & Olive, know that even a cheaper journal with black paper will give you good result with any pens. 

The advantage of the thick paper in the Blackout Book is that it can handle gouache and watercolor without warping. 

Speaking of more affordable option, I found only one on Amazon from the brand "The Mood Twister", I never tried this brand but heard it's good, at least when it comes to the white paper version. Their black paper one is a little over half the price of an A&O and also boast 160 GSM paper. 

It's still a good option for all of your who aren't ready to commit to a super premium brand and just want to give black paper a try.

There is no question that A&O is expensive, and if you are just starting with bullet journalling, it's probably not your first choice of book to try. 

back in 2019, Bigger Dreams contacted me for a partnership and sent me one in the bundle they wanted me to test and review in my blog post, that's when I knew I was going to get hooked sooner or later. I used that first A&O as a Life Journal because I felt a bit bad about using such nice quality paper as a planner, beside by the time I was set to review that bundle, I had started setting up my 2020 BuJo already. 

It's during the crazy year that 2020 was that I suddenly decided to splurge and get one to set up my 2021 BuJo in and so far I have been HOOKED. 

Paper thickness set aside, the two other things I love in the A&O journals is that the dot grid pages perfectly line up from one page to the next, so split layouts will always look great. This problem of dots not lining existed in all my previous journals. Then, the binding is made to last! Even if you add washi tape and stickers inside, the book will bulge just a bit, and the spine and binding will stay strong. This has been the biggest weak spot both my Matrikas notebook and I am glad to not have a problem of a cracking spine with Archer & Olive.

Living in India, I recommend sticking to dark colored cover though, no matter the brand of BuJo notebook, but especially when said book comes with a fabric cover that can't be wiped clean. My current A&O has a black cover, and it is showing signs of dirt and dust, if it had been on a lighter color like my light blue life journal it would have looked really gross considering it's the one notebook I handle several times a day and sits on my desk all the time. 

The life journal in question is also showing signs of use on the cover and a few "dirt" spots, but less because it's not a book I constantly use.

Who else is ready to start setting up their 2022 Bullet Journal? How early do you start? Let me know in the comments below. 

It was back in 2017 when I was just starting selling on Society6 and Redbubble and still exploring many styles and techniques. It was also the time I decided to "splurge" on a set of Sakura Koi brush pens (this is an affiliate link), the very same markers I used to draw my minimalist blossom.

The idea of drawing an elephant came from a doodle I drew in a sketchbook, and I decided to refine the doodle and turn it into a proper illustration on quality bristol paper (which is the type of paper you need to draw with markers). Sakura Koi brush pens, like all water based brush pens, are water soluble, so I used a wet paintbrush to dilute the color in places to give it a watercolor kind of effect on the body. 

Those markers,  even the lightest in the set were super pigmented and saturated, so I only colored a small part of the elephant with it and then with the paint brush dragged the color all over. I used the other brush pens without diluting them to color the details on the blanket.

Then, into my scanner it went, where I scanned it at 1200 dpi to get a large size enough to play around with to put on some of the bigger products Society6 has to offer. After a little editing in Photoshop, the first commercial version of that design I came up with was this one : 

Which was also my second sale on Society6, a just a few hours after I uploaded it (and promoted it to my audience). To this date, I have no idea who bought it. 

I since then came with several other variations including a quite cool pink paisley version : 

The most well known version, has to be the "3 elephants" version though, less on Print on Demand than because of the Etsy stickers and keychains I created from it : 

The great thing with small doodles and illustrations is that you can easily come up with many versions and colorways in Photoshop and can revisit a theme over the year. This elephant is one I can take out of my asset library and experiment with to see what else I can come up with because it's just one easily editable element.

I have quite a few designs that fall in that category of assets I can combine and tweak and play around with. Many of those experiments were not worth saving, but it's fun to play around still. 

If you are a surface designer and illustrator, you probably know by now that anything old can be turned into something new when it comes to your illustration assets, all it take is a little bit of Photoshop and a good dose of curiosity and see where that takes you.

A few years later, I gave this purple elephant a Llama buddy, but that will be a story for another episode.